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While Bitcoin (BTC) hogged the headlines when it smashed its previous all-time high set in April, it isn’t the only crypto that soared to new heights this month. Ether (ETH), the native crypto of the Ethereum blockchain, also smashed its previous record and set a new ATH last week.
Ether set a new all-time high on Friday, October 29, when ETH rose to $4,461.96 per coin, according to CNBC. The Ethereum token’s market cap saw a significant boost and rose above $520 billion.
This means that those who bought the crypto a year ago made massive gains in just 12 months. Ether was trading at just $382 per coin on October 29, 2020.
A $1,000 Ether purchase made at that time would have already been worth $11,645.71 on Friday when the crypto set its new ATH. This represents an increase of over 1,000 percent in just a year’s time.
While Bitcoin also posted significant gains since last year, its performance pales in comparison to that of Ether. A BTC purchase made last year would be worth $4,476, representing a price increase of roughly 450 percent.
ETH also outperformed BTC since the start of 2021. At the time of writing, Ether traded at $4,311.85 per coin and posted year-to-date returns of 486.62 percent based on data from Coindesk. For comparison, Bitcoin’s YTD returns reached 110.91 percent as the crypto currently traded at $61,055.45.
ETH’s rally came after the Altair upgrade on Wednesday last week. The upgrade is one of the steps toward the Ethereum 2.0 integration, which will significantly change the networks’ infrastructure.
At the moment, the Ethereum blockchain operates using the proof of work (PoW) model, which is very energy-intensive. The Altair upgrade tested the network’s ability to switch to a proof of stake (PoS) model, where users validate transactions depending on the number of ETH coins they hold.
